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Configuring Additional VCSA 5.1 as vSphere Web Client Servers

09.24.2012 by William Lam // 6 Comments

In my previous article, I showed you how to configure additional vSphere Web Client 5.1 Servers for a Windows environment. For those interested in using the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) instead to configure additional vSphere Web Client Servers, here is the process.

Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Please test this in a development environment before using it on actual systems.

Before getting started, it is very important to ensure you have proper DNS resolution (forward / reverse working) on all your VCSA's.

Step 1 - You will need to know the IP Address or hostname of your vCenter SSO Server (If you are using the VCSA, then it is the same address as your vCenter Server). Next, deploy a brand new VCSA and go ahead and configure the IP Address, hostname, etc. in preparation for the next step.

Step 2 - Create a script called configureVCSAvSphereWebClientStandalone.sh (this script reside on the new VCSA itself or on a remote host) which contains the following

#!/bin/bash
# William Lam
# www.virtuallyghetto.com

# User Configurations

VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS=172.30.0.181

## DO NOT EDIT BEYOND HERE ##

echo "Adding Lookup Service URL to /etc/vmware/ls_url.txt & /etc/vmware-sso/ls_url.txt"
echo "https://${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS}:7444/lookupservice/sdk" > /etc/vmware/ls_url.txt;echo "https://${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS}:7444/lookupservice/sdk" > /etc/vmware-sso/ls_url.txt;

echo "Retrieving ${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS} SSL Certificate"
echo "" | openssl s_client -connect ${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS}:7444 2> /dev/null 1> /tmp/cert

echo "Storing ${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS} SSL Certificate in /etc/ssl/certs/VMware-Lookup-Service-Root-CA.pem"
openssl x509 -in /tmp/cert > /etc/ssl/certs/VMware-Lookup-Service-Root-CA.pem

echo "Registering vSphere Web Client with ${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS}"
/usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/vsphere-client-sso-hook install --ls-server https://${VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS}:7444/lookupservice/sdk --user root --password vmware

 
You will need to change the VCENTER_SSO_IPADDRESS variable to the address of your vCenter SSO Server.

Step 3 - Set the script to executable by running the following command:

chmod +x configureVCSAvSphereWebClientStandalone.sh

Step 4 - You can either execute the script locally on the VCSA or my preferred method is just to execute it remotely by running the following command:

ssh [email protected] < configureVCSAvSphereWebClientStandalone.sh

Note: Make sure to replace the IP Address with address of your VCSA

As part of the configuration, the vSphere Web Client service will automatically start up at the very end. Once the service has successfully started, you will be able to connect to the vSphere Web Client URL by going to https://[webclient-hostname-ip]:9443/vsphere-client and you now should be able to see all the vCenter Servers that have registered with the same vCenter SSO server.

Here is another view using the new VIN 1.2 (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) to show that I have two vSphere Web Client servers (webclient1 and webclient2) registered to my primary vCenter SSO Server (vcenter51-1) as well as two additional vCenter Server (vcenter51-2 and vcenter51-3) that are also registered with the same SSO Server.

As you can see, if you need to add additional vSphere Web Client Servers, the VCSA can easily be configured to enable only this feature to help you scale out and provide additional capacity as well as redundancy. Stay tuned for some more details on configuring a Load Balancer to load balance multiple vSphere Web Client Servers.

Additional Resources: 

  • Automating VCSA 5.1 (vCenter Server Appliance) Configurations
  • Automatically Join Multiple VCSA 5.1 using New vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On)
  • Configuring Additional Windows vSphere Web Client 5.1 Servers

 

Categories // vSphere, vSphere Web Client Tags // lookupservice, sso, vcenter, vcsa, vcva, vSphere 5.1, vsphere web client

Configuring Additional Windows vSphere Web Client 5.1 Servers

09.20.2012 by William Lam // 10 Comments

Did you know in vSphere 5.1, you can now configure multiple vSphere Web Client servers to multiple vCenter 5.1 Servers and get a single view of your entire infrastructure as well as provide redundancy to the vSphere Web Client? This is all made possible with the new vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On) and Lookup Service feature.

When you first install vCenter Server, you can install the vSphere Web Client on the same machine or you can install it on a separate machine. If you decide to install the vSphere Web Client on a separate system or add additional vSphere Web Client servers, you simply just need to point them to your main vCenter SSO instance.

Note: If you wish to re-point or re-register other vCenter Server components, there is nice VMware KB that goes over all the steps.

Before getting started, it is very important to ensure you have proper DNS resolution (forward / reverse working) on all your Windows servers.

If you are running Windows, when you install the vSphere Web Client, you will be brought to a screen to specify your SSO Administrator credentials ([email protected] for windows) or (root for VCSA) as well as the Lookup Service URL which will be the same system running your vCenter SSO service.

Note: In my lab, I am using the VCSA for my vCenter Server as well as my SSO server, but this can also be a Windows vCenter Server and SSO Server.

You also have the ability to re-point your vSphere Web Client to another vCenter SSO server and you can do so by using the following script: C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphereWebClient\scripts\client-repoint.bat To use the script, you just need to specify the new Lookup Service URL along with the SSO Administrator credentials.

C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphereWebClient\scripts\client-repoint.bat https://172.30.0.181:7444/lookupservice/sdk root vmware

Once the script has finished registering with the new vCenter SSO server, you can now connect to the vSphere Web Client URL by going to https://[webclient-hostname-ip]:9443/vsphere-client and you now should be able to see all the vCenter Servers that have registered with the same vCenter SSO server.

Here is another view using the new VIN 1.2 (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) to show that I have two vSphere Web Client servers (webclient 3 and webclient4) registered to my primary vCenter SSO Server (vcenter51-1) as well as two additional vCenter Server (vcenter51-2 and vcenter51-3) that are also registered with the same SSO Server.

As you can see this provides me with single view of all my vCenter Servers and I can now connect to either vSphere Web Client servers which can be used for both load balancing as well as redundancy. You probably might have guessed, the next logical step is to put an actual load balancer in front of multiple vSphere Web Clients and simply expose a single entry point for your end users .... stay tune 🙂

FYI - If you are interested in using the VCSA and only enabling the vSphere Web Client feature, the process is slightly different and I will share the procedure in a separate post.

Categories // vSphere, vSphere Web Client Tags // client-repoint.bat, lookupservice, sso, vcenter, vSphere 5.1, vsphere web client, windows

Automatically Join Multiple VCSA 5.1 using New vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On)

09.06.2012 by William Lam // 11 Comments

You may have recently heard about the new vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On) feature that is now part of the latest release of vSphere 5.1 which provides centralized authentication and directory services (supports multiple identify sources) across your vCenter Servers. vCenter SSO also provides a true single pane of glass for managing and viewing all your vSphere infrastructure and solutions, unlike it's predecessor Linked Mode feature, which many used to get a centralized view of all their vCenter Servers but without the true single-sign on capabilities.

Note: If you would like to learn more about the new vCenter SSO, I would recommend you take a look at the What's New vCenter Server 5.1 whitepaper by Justin King. 

I really love the new vCenter SSO feature, especially in my home lab where I have several vCenter Server 5.0 and 5.1 hosts running and I can view all of them in a single interface! One thing I tend to do a lot in my lab is automated deployments (you probably might have already guessed) and though the configuration web interface for vCenter Server is pretty easy to use, there is still a lot of clicking involved (as you know, I hate clicking a lot).

Just like with automating VCSA 5.1 deployments, I also looked into automating the joining of a VCSA to an existing vCenter SSO server. The example below will outline configuring a single VCSA to act as the primary vCenter SSO server and then configure two additional VCSA which will then connect to this primary vCenter Server providing them SSO capabilities.You can also run through this manually through the configuration web interface for each VCSA, but as mentioned earlier, it is manual and did I forget to mention ... tedious!

Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Please test this in a development environment before using it on actual systems.

Step 1 - Configure your primary VCSA which will be the main SSO server. You will be leveraging the same script as shown in this article. 

Step 2 - Next, you will need to configure you secondary and tertiary (or n-others) VCSA using a similar script as in Step 1, but instead of configuring for an embedded SSO server, it will connect to the external SSO server which is specified by the IP Address or hostname of your primary VCSA.

Here is a script with the minimal commands needed for configuring your additional VCSA:
Note: Make sure you update the PRIMARY_VC variable to reflect the IP Address or hostname of your primary VCSA that was configured in Step 1

You will notice the output to be very similar, but it actually queries for the primary VCSA's lookupservice SSL thumbprint to configure the VCSA to use an external SSO server.

Once you have successfully deployed and configure your additional VCSA servers, you should now be able to login to your primary VCSA and view all your vCenter Servers in the inventory.

Is this not a cool feature!? You no longer have to manage dozen of vSphere C# Clients to get a view of your vSphere infrastructure!

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // lookupservice, sso, vcenter, vcsa, vpxd_servicecfg, vSphere 5.1

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Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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